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Perspective Shift

You read this story from where you sit.
Want to read it from somewhere else?

We'll re-present the same story as a thoughtful proponent of the self-sabotage spectacle frame would. Not to convince you. To let you actually meet the argument.

Choose a vantage
Professional fitness frame
An attorney who repeatedly committed domestic violence, blew off his court-ordered remediation, and then verbally abused bar officials has demonstrated exactly the kind of poor judgment and propensity for violence that disqualifies someone from practicing law.
Self-sabotage spectacle frame
The remarkable feature here isn't the disbarment itself but the respondent's own performance — taunting the court, boasting about military violence, dismissing his crimes as 'felonious peccadillos' — a near-textbook case of a lawyer talking himself into the harshest possible sanction.
Retold from the other vantage
Steelman · slot B
He wrote his own disbarment order
A veteran bar-discipline practitioner would argue —
In twenty years of watching show-cause proceedings, I've rarely seen a respondent work this hard against himself. Faced with an interim suspension and a chance to demonstrate remorse, Barlean sent the OBA more than twenty emails calling the state's highest court "incompetent," "a joke," "redneck and lazy," telling the bar to "bring it on bitch," boasting that he doesn't strangle people because he was trained to "crush or pull out voice boxes," and inviting a paralegal to "come after me so I can show you what the United States trained me to do to Communists." He dismissed his convictions as "felonious peccadillos." Mitigation exists for lawyers who show insight; aggravation exists for lawyers who show none. He gave the court no choice it could defensibly make other than disbarment.

If this read like a fair rendering of the argument — even when you disagree — it's doing its job. Steelmen aren't aimed at persuading you; they're aimed at what the other side actually believes when they're thinking clearly.